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I narrowed my eyes, silently commanding her not to fuck with me right now.
She lifted both hands. “I swear. My full name’s Remy Elisa Curran. Elisa is my middle name, but only my uncle at the restaurant calls me that.”
“And you apparently understand English perfectly fine,” I sneered. Then it hit me. Fuck, she knew English. She’d understood everything I’d told her when we’d been together, things I never would’ve admitted to a girl I’d just met.
Jesus, how the lies were piling up.
I ran my fingers through my hair, tugging at my scalp, trying to calm down, but I just...this blew my mind.
She reached out toward me, concern lacing her features. “Do you need to sit down?”
I cast her a killer glare. “No, I don’t need to fucking sit down. I need a fucking explanation. Why?”
“I just...” Her lashes blinked rapidly, and I could see tears glaze over her eyes. Then she hugged herself and admitted, “I just wanted a chance to be in the band.”
I shook my head, confused and not at all expecting that answer. “What?”
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“Non-Castrato,” she said. “I went to audition for the drummer spot as myself...but that bastard Galloway wouldn’t even let me play one song with you guys.”
My mouth fell open. “Punk rocker girl?” I whispered in horror. She was punk rocker girl too? “That was you?”
When she nodded, I threw my arms into the air and snorted. But of course. It was just my luck that the biggest liar on the planet would end up being all three ladies I’d been daydreaming and fantasizing about lately. Fucking perfect.
“What was up with the Tina Turner wig?” I demanded.
She shrugged and looked a little ill. “Nothing. I just thought it looked badass for the part.”
The part? Yeah, she’d definitely been playing a part...all fucking month long.
“How many other secret identities do you have?”
She shook her head and bowed her face. “That’s it.” When I sniffed, she looked up, scowling. “It is!”
“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes and ran my hands through my hair, trying to straighten everything in my muddled head. “So you made up ‘Sticks,’ the gay male drummer, to get into the band—” I broke off abruptly to wince because it suddenly struck me...Sticks didn’t exist. All the rounds of Call of Duty we’d played, the teasing, songwriting together, all the shit he’d helped me with and times he had my back. I recalled the night in Chicago when he—she’d—been ready to defend me with nothing but mace and a whistle, and an arrow of pain passed through me. Sticks, my friend, was gone forever.
And why the hell hadn’t it thumped me right over the head that mace and a whistle were the classic rape preventatives—lady protection. I was such a fucking dumbass. How many times she must’ve laughed over my idiotic cluelessness.
I narrowed my eyes on her as she said, “I actually didn’t even mean to join the band. I was just so pissed after you wouldn’t listen to me; I planned on ripping off the mask afterward and telling you, ha, a woman could play drums just as well as a man could. But then you went and invited me to play with you guys that Friday. I’d never played in front of an audience before. I wanted to know what it was like. And then that very night, we got the gig for Chicago and you sounded so excited, I couldn’t let you down and tell you I was a girl then. What if Gally kicked me out and you’d never gotten to go to Chicago?”
“Oh, so this was all to help me?” I snarled.
She flushed and let out a small sigh. “Of course not. But it did contribute to the reason I didn’t tell you immediately, until I passed the point that I could tell you without causing a huge ordeal, and then I was just too afraid to...because I knew you’d react this way.”
This way? So she thought I was overreacting, huh? I rolled my eyes. Nice. “Where does Incubus shirt girl fit into all this?” I had to know.
She blinked, confused. “She doesn’t.”
When I only lifted an eyebrow, telling her to try again, she gritted her teeth and growled out a sound. “I didn’t even know that song existed until after I joined the band, and Ten told me about it.”
I growled. Fucking Ten. “But you knew it was about you?”
She cringed. “After I read the lyrics, I knew it was a distinct possibility I was that girl, yes.”
“Un-fucking-believable.”
I wiped my hands over my face and had to spin away because it was so hard to look at her and not see Elisa, not remember every detail of everything we’d done in my bed.
